Tag: Middlebury College

Hypocrisy at Middlebury College

Guest Post by Jeff Jacoby via The Boston Globe

When the school besmirched an alumnus for his short-lived support of eugenics, it kept remarkably quiet about its own disgraceful — and lengthy — history on the subject.

Middlebury College, as seen in 2013 from the chapel,

In the summer of 1913, Middlebury College in Vermont was asked to organize a Rural Life Conference as part of an effort to promote economic, social, and intellectual improvement across the state.

Middlebury agreed to host the conference and supplied speakers for the week-long program. Robert J. Sprague, a professor of economics and sociology at the Massachusetts Agricultural College, was recruited to chair the event. Like many academics and scientists at the time, Sprague was a champion of eugenics — the now-discredited belief that human populations could and should be improved by preventing inferior classes of people from reproducing.

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Middlebury College Removes Chapel Donor’s Name

Guest Post by Jim Douglas via Paul Craig Roberts

At the crack of dawn on September 27, 2021, while the campus was just coming to life, Middlebury College removed the sign denoting the name of the institution’s house of worship. It had been ‘Mead Memorial Chapel’ for more than a century, since a former Vermont governor, John Mead, donated the structure on the grounds of his — and my — alma mater. He specified its name, to which the Trustees readily agreed.

The College issued a statement shortly after the deed was done, explaining that the Chapel had been named to honor Governor Mead and his wife. That’s completely false. The Governor selected the name not in his own honor, but in memory of his ancestors, the first settlers in the region. That’s right: Middlebury removed the name from a building without even knowing for whom the building was named!

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CALLING OUT THE CANCEL CULTURE

Submitted by Hardscrabble Farmer

Middlebury College is one of the most expensive schools in Vermont. It features a safe, bucolic, and well-maintained campus along with a sizeable endowment for a school of its size. During the heat of the BLM movement when it seemed that statues of historic figures were being toppled almost daily, a small group of administrators decided to strip the name of Mead from the marble Chapel that bore it for over a century. They created a narrative that the man responsible for its construction, a former Governor of Vermont and alumnus, John Mead, was a -gasp- eugenicist. The statements that they made at the time gave the impression that the decision was made only after thoughtful deliberation, a fiction that was quickly exposed by members of the Mead family.

The actions, impulsive and reactionary, were not to go unanswered and last year a suit was filed by another retired Vermont governor on behalf of the family of John Mead.

This story is one that reflects the current zeitgeist of Progressive Post America. Claiming current standards should apply to historic personages and that shaming, deplatforming and censorship is the only suitable solution for imagined transgressions of another time. Had they not been so dishonest in their communications with family members, and the press it is likely that they would have gotten away with it. Their responses were equally fallacious, claiming that no records of any agreement between Mead and the College existed and that the removal of the name from the hallowed shrine was purely academic rather than a breach of contract.

The pendulum of history is wont to swing both ways. Perhaps in some small way there will be an accounting for these transgressions and the school will be one of the first to reverse course when politically correct decisions are made in haste.

Via Legal Insurrection

Exclusive Video Interview: Former VT Governor On His Challenge To Middlebury College’s De-Naming Iconic Mead Chapel

James Douglas: “They took the name off the building without even knowing for whom the building was named.”

Early one morning in September 2021, while most of Vermont’s Middlebury College campus was still asleep, workers arrived at the Mead Memorial Chapel. Tools in hand, they wrenched the rustic wooden sign bearing the Mead family name out of its niche above the entrance to the 105-year-old historic house of worship. It broke as it came out, exposing the bare brick wall behind it.

After the deed was done, the school pointed to Governor John Abner Mead’s “instigating role” in the Vermont eugenics movement as the reason for ripping his family’s name off  the iconic chapel he endowed.

(Image from Court Complaint)

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HOW TO KILL A COLLEGE

Submitted by Hardscrabble Farmer

This is an interesting little story from just across the river from us. A small college in Vermont with a long history and solid reputation got caught up in the wokening. In 2021 someone made a decision to deplatform one of its most successful alumnus, former Vermont Governor Mead.

Now another former governor has stood up and said, Enough.

What the college likely thought would be an easy win- strip the name of the benefactor from the building, but keep the monetary value and move on to progressive utopia with accolades. What they failed to understand was that colleges in America are almost entirely funded, not so much by tuition, but endowments. When those graduates who contribute selflessly in order to support their alma maters discover that at some point they will be vilified, reviled and tossed to the curb but won’t receive a refund in the exchange, the cash spigot will twist further left than the administration.

Here’s to those who stand up to the gynarchy.

Via WCAX.com

Former Gov. Douglas sues Middlebury College over chapel name

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. (WCAX) – Former Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas is suing Middlebury College for removing the ‘Mead Memorial Chapel’ sign from the institution’s historic and iconic structure.

Now called the Middlebury Chapel, the more than century-old marble building stands on the campus’s highest point and often serves as the recognizable backdrop to its branding, marketing, and merchandising.

Former Gov. John Mead, who served from 1910 to 1912, paid to construct the meeting house and place of worship at his alma mater in 1914, under the condition it bear the name Mead in honor of his ancestors.

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